the truth is always subversive

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All too often, the phrase "corporate free press" is something of an oxymoron. Whether to maximise sales, to attract advertisers, or simply to promote the interests of their wealthy owners, the mass media open strange, self-serving and grossly distorted windows onto the world.

This website is another window. Here you'll find documentaries, lectures and interviews following a different editorial line.

The Levellers were a relatively loose alliance of radicals and freethinkers who came to prominence during the period of instability that characterized the English Civil War of 1642 – 1649.

What bound these people together was the general belief that all men were equal; since this was the case, then a government could only have legitimacy if it was elected by the people. The Leveller demands were for a secular republic, abolition of the House of Lords, equality before the law, the right to vote for all, free trade, the abolition of censorship, freedom of speech, the abolition of tithes and tolls, and the absolute right for people to worship whatever religion they chose, or none at all. This program was published as “The Agreement of the People”.

The Levellers argued that since God had created all men as equals, the land belonged to all the people as a right. Their program was, then, essentially an attempt to restore the situation that they believed had existed previous to the Norman Conquest in 1099; they wanted to establish a ‘commonwealth’ in which the common people would be in control of their own destiny without the intervention of a King, a House of Lords and other potential oppressors.

If you know Mark Steel at all, it’s probably as a recurring guest on BBC comedy panel shows (Buzzcocks, QI, etc). However, he’s also an ardent socialist, and for those of you who are getting sick of badly sync’ed audio on video clips, I offer you the following audio clip: Mark’s lecture on Marx, an entertaining biography of a flawed but brilliant man, worlds away from the sinister figure of capitalist demonology and equally distant from the equally sinister figure of Stalinist hagiography.

In one of his best and most important films so far (94 mins), John Pilger looks at how the people of Latin America are subjugated to the imperial designs (or, “national interests”) of the United States – and how the people are fighting back.

Journalist and author Naomi Klein addresses the American Sociological Association, in a meeting themed “Is Another World Possible”. In an informed and inspiring talk (~36mins) on globalisation, altermondialisation and the end of The End Of History, Klein argues:

We did not lose the battles of ideas. We were not outsmarted and we were not out-argued. We lost because we were crushed. Sometimes we were crushed by army tanks, and sometimes we were crushed by think tanks. And by think tanks I mean the people who are paid to think by the makers of tanks.